THE STORY – In 1970, two things happened: Russell Crowe stepped onto a film set for the first time and received his first guitar. In “What Love Builds,” Crowe gives us a soliloquy set to a lifetime of his own music. Revealing and deeply personal, it shows how music and acting are intrinsic and interconnected through storytelling and performance.
THE CAST – Russell Crowe, Alan Doyle, Scott Grimes, Carl Falk & Samantha Barks
THE TEAM – Russell Crowe (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 99 Minutes
Did you know Russell Crowe also made music? Did you know he was doing it long before he was an actor? If not, don’t worry, he’ll tell you so himself roughly fifteen times in “What Love Builds,” the actor/musician’s latest documentary that tracks the evolution of his career from a young rocker in New Zealand to an Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor. Written and directed by Crowe, this musical documentary is a fairly endearing, if often self-absorbed, insight into the side of the Hollywood star that many audiences won’t know a single thing about.
“What Love Builds” is somewhere between a musical and a documentary; the majority of the film is told through reflective interviews with Crowe himself as he describes the influence that music has had over his career and takes audiences through the various bands that he’s been a part of while building his Hollywood persona at the same time. The rest of the film consists of Crowe’s live music performances, primarily from his world tour alongside his current outlet, Indoor Garden Party.
There’s a certain air of egocentricity about “What Love Builds” that some viewers may find difficult to overcome, but once you manage to penetrate the vain exterior of this documentary, there’s something remarkably self-aware and admirable about Crowe’s willingness to break down his career in a way that’s both critical and takes pride in his own work. The first 30 minutes play out like any autobiographical documentary: Crowe recounts stories of his youth to the camera, while archive footage plays over his narration to paint a more vivid image for the viewer. This is easily the weakest part of “What Love Builds,” and it’s in these moments that many audiences will promptly dismiss the project as a plain vanity project that doesn’t necessarily add anything of note to Crowe’s story. The fact that the film is written and directed by Crowe, featuring footage where he’s presumably interviewing himself, is a tough hurdle to overcome in terms of why this film needed to be made in the first place.
Once Crowe’s story reaches a certain point, however, “What Love Builds” quickly becomes a much more critical, self-aware documentary that genuinely has something to say about the relationship between his music career, his blossoming Hollywood fame, and his hostile relationship with the press. As soon as Crowe makes the surprisingly honest admission that he didn’t necessarily consider himself a great musician (which some of the concert footage admittedly corroborates), “What Love Builds” feels like a much more honest, worthwhile project that caters less to Crowe’s narcissism and more to his desire to tell his side of a story that’s previously only been told by the press.
This self-aware tone throughout the second half is ultimately what saves Crowe’s film from losing all momentum and donning the mantle of “just another autobiography.” There’s a real sentimentality to “What Love Builds” that proves Crowe doesn’t view himself as some auteur musician-turned-actor, but rather an outward creative who stumbled into the acting business and will always have a deep-rooted love for music. This is clearly a passion project for Crowe, and you can always feel the care that he puts into every moment of telling this story.
That being said, “What Love Builds” is still a fairly indulgent film that some audiences will simply dismiss if they don’t have any pre-existing attachment to Crowe’s career. There are scenes where Crowe explains how his love for music influenced his own filmography, including stories from the set of “Gladiator” and “Robin Hood” that people without any fondness for the actor simply won’t get anything out of. It also feels surprisingly long, given its relatively short runtime; there are several moments that could have been a poignant conclusion to this story, and yet “What Love Builds” simply carries on.
Ultimately, “What Love Builds” is a film with a very specific audience in mind that refuses to cater to any other. For those who already know of Russell Crowe’s musical career and want to learn more about his own perspective on his work, it’s a fairly engaging documentary that offers exactly that. For those who don’t have any existing relationship with Crowe’s body of work, there’s very little to be gleaned from this otherwise self-absorbed project. But as he repeatedly tells the audience at his live shows: those outside the room can criticize all they want, but all that matters is that those who enjoy his work are having fun.
